October 23, 2005

To roughly put it, the results were 250-150 against the petition slate...

In the 2005 trustee election, which is all-media (voting via internet, snail mail, etc.) 24.3% of alums voted—that's 15,334 people—and since multiple votes could be cast, there were 35,107 votes...

[Today there were] between 400 and 500 alums voting. That's 3% of the group who cast ballots in the trustee election...Assuming 450 voters today, that is roughly 0.73% of the 62,000 living alums.

This doesn't settle much of anything given the extremely limited number of voters. It is clearly difficult to project how the voting would have gone had it been extended to people who were not able to come to Hanover this weekend, which seems like a more than reasonable accomodation. Joe believes that this is no real sign of support for the administration's policies.

I tend to agree, but with this caveat--wouldn't the people who were physically present at a Dartmouth Homecoming Weekend usually be the most diehard Dartmouth traditionalists, or at least disproportionately so? Unless we find that the nominated slate found their strongest supporters and flew them all to Hanover, it does seem as if at least a solid portion of Dartmouth's diehards support the administration.

3 comments:

No, they wouldn't be the most die-hard traditionalists. A very large percentage of those in attendance are members of the Alumni Association or the Alumni Council and thus devoted to the status quo--these alone could be a quarter of voters. And there's no reason to assume that just because someone shows up to get plastered over Homecoming that they support reform.

And just because someone is a Dartmouth die-hard doesn't mean they're a traditionalist. Take the Alumni Association--they're pretty die-hard to volunteer their time to alumni governance, but they're hardly a force of stability or caution.

Well, I showed up, and I voted, and I'm hardly a traditionalist - I'm a (gasp) liberal, female, younger alumna. There are some things I would like to change about the way the AA is governed, and I think in this case the proposed channels are the most appropriate.

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